


Metanoia

by symphorophilia (klismaphilia)



Series: Canon Compliant Star Wars Fics [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Armitage Hux Needs A Hug, Awkward Kissing, Death Wish, Emotional Constipation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Masochism, Mental Instability, Mild Sexual Content, No like he actually needs a hug thats all he needs in life, Post-Battle of Starkiller Base, Self-Denial, Verbal Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 17:45:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9082882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klismaphilia/pseuds/symphorophilia
Summary: “Sometimes I thought you were a droid,” Kylo confesses against his ear, and Hux breathes a broken chuckle.“Perhaps I am,” he says, finally. “I don’t really know what I am.”





	

**Metanoia**

**...**

 

Hux liked to pick fights.

It had been a common hindrance in his development since he could remember; because, as with all things, Brendol had never approved. Had Brendol approved, Hux may not have found the concept as riveting as he had; showing up to the commandant’s office with a swollen black eye or a busted jaw was somehow a pastime that he’d never been able to get enough of.

There was something in the scornful looks of his commanding officers, the disgust in his father’s eye that sated the deep-rooted secret in Hux’s core, something he hadn’t been able to purge himself of even after ascending through the ranks. As a General, a person expected to have a harsh hand and a keen eye in respect to the successes and failures of his men, Hux appeared straight-edged and tight-laced. His habit was to remain a mere memory on the edges of his consciousness; undivulged to any who approached him.

Even when his blood rushed through his ears and his heart pounded, reverberating through his bones like a steady wardrum or firing blaster, Hux was to remain _stable._ Controlled, successful, _restrained._

It was, of course, very difficult with the presence of people like Kylo Ren aboard his vessel, who lashed out freely with his power, who held an utter animosity for the world that he wasn’t forced to _hide._ Even, then, people like Unamo and Thanisson, who were dedicated to their positions and yet completely incapable of producing anything other than ignorance at times, were able to retain some sense of their innermost feelings as they chatted with their familiars. And Hux had learned to pretend that it didn’t bother him, because _of course, he would._ He would, so as not to disgrace his already-pathetic heritage, he _would_ , so as not to appear weak.

But _oh,_ he _was_ weak, and he knew it.

He knew it when he overstepped his boundaries with his commanding officer, several years back, and ended up being backhanded for his insolence. He knew it when Ren derided him, tried to get under his skin, shoved him away as though he were nothing more than a worthless _tool,_ a nuisance to the Knight’s very existence. (This was, of course, so reminiscent of Brendol’s dismissal, so reminiscent of when his father would tear into his skin with a belt or order him around as though he were no more than a servant.)

( _He wasn’t, really._ )

“Know your place, Armitage,” Brendol had told him, and he had listened for too long, _too long,_ until he could no longer bury his rage and it pressed into his very heart and split it in two. _Your place,_ and it was so funny how people had told him that, as though Armitage was expected to know what that was, _your place,_ and it was like a smack in the face on its own, an ever-present flaw, Hux’s own insecurity.

_Worthless, worthless, useless bastard, tiny, fragile, feminine, your mother’s son, unwanted whelp, bastard, heathen, heartless, killmekillmehurtme._

Sometimes, Hux thought he could sense pity emanating from Ren, from Captain Phasma, a knowing sadness that only turned his anger further inward, impressed upon him that he was weak, that he was _fragile,_ and _they knew it._ They all must’ve known, somehow, must’ve gone around prattling about it behind his back, that he was _overcompensating,_ that he was _choleric,_ prone to burst at any moment.

He was-- he didn’t even know it until after Starkiller, dragging Ren back to a shuttle while Hux reflected on his orders, suddenly so aware of just how _disposable_ he was. And he’d thought the Supreme Leader _different,_ somehow, not like his father, the father that _Snoke had helped him kill…_ but he wasn’t. And of course he wasn’t, because how could a _weak-willed slip of paper_ compare to a force-sensitive, stoic _harbinger_ _of chaos_ like Kylo Ren?

He wouldn’t cry.

Hux didn’t cry.

It was an abhorrent thing, crying, those crystalline rivers of _despair_ that he’d never been allowed, that he _wasn’t supposed to have,_ because he wasn’t supposed to _feel._ To feel was to be _weak,_ to express was to _prove his father right._

How ridiculous that, after everything he’d seen and done, it took a mere comment from _Mitaka_ to make him shout.

How _utterly foolish_ it was that the comment was not harsh, was not _prying, scalding, derisive or alienating,_ but that it was a comment of _sensitivity_ that forced Hux’s eyes to swell with tears.

“Are you sure you’re alright, sir?”

“ _Of course I’m pfaasking alright!”_ Hux had spat back, no care for the number of officers currently stationed on the bridge, no care for the form of Kylo Ren stiff in the doorway, watching him with a peaked interest, or the presence of Captain Phasma, her blaster being set on the table, neglected. “Why wouldn’t I be? Why _wouldn’t_ I? I’ve only destroyed my life’s work, made a fool of myself, _disappointed_ everyone. I’ve only signed my own _death warrant,_ which doesn’t matter in the least, because I’m nothing more than a kriffing _pawn_ trying to act like I have a _purpose!”_

 _Know your place, Armitage,_ the voice of his father whispers once more, and Hux doesn’t even remember what his place is.

All he knows is that there’s a hand catching his wrist, prying bony fingers away from the handle of his blaster, and his arms being twisted behind his back and Hux is _kicking,_ wildly, like a distressed animal unable to even keep a handle on his own anger. And this isn’t _his_ domain, this is what resistance _scum_ did, writhing and playing dirty, and what _Kylo Ren_ did, tearing things apart for some sort of personal gratification. And it doesn’t matter now, anyway, because his shoulder is _popping,_ the dislocated joint a familiar pain that creeps along his nerves until his vision is blinded by red, white hot _pain_ lancing up his spine.

And then Ren (and of course it’s Ren, when hasn’t it been?) is _punching_ him and it feels so _good,_ the tear of skin near his mouth, the split of his dry lips as he laughs, some neurotic, deranged _thing_ that doesn’t know what he’s even doing.

His head spins with it; the shadows behind his shuttered eyelids, the flashes of static, voices that nagged him through his youth, _oppressed him in his own skin,_ made him empty. Hux can’t see, he can’t think, he can’t _make sense of it,_ because all there is is this _feeling._

For the first time since Hux can remember, he gives in to the reminder of pain, the _love_ and _guidance_ that it encourages. A smile plays across his twitching lips, and he falls, down and down and down into an abyss of _craving._

 

* * *

 

 

When he wakes, everything is dark. The lights have been dimmed within his quarters, and the windows tightly shuttered, a microcosm of his being left to simmer in this room, half-alone and barely present. Hux can recognize the familiar feeling of a sheet draped over his bare skin, his shirt missing and discarded, boots removed, hair messy and disheveled. His face still stings, the bandages around his shoulder not having set it back in place.

He can’t remember how he got here.

“General,” a deep voice comes from across the room, and Hux sits up, his instincts on edge, alarms blaring in his head as he tries to draw another breath from his throat. And when his eyes settle on Ren, the _anger_ is all he can feel, the _enmity_ of having been pushed aside once more, deemed worthless. And-- _deities,_ if Ren has seen him at his worst, someone he loathes so intensely that their relationship is nearly intimate, then Hux is already discredited.

“Not anymore,” Hux says, and his voice is dry, meek, as though it’s been unused for decades. He can feel how parched his throat is, can feel the wheeze of his breath as it threatens to give out entirely, pitch him backward into a gangly, awkward mess of a teenager, throwing punches for the hell of it and getting himself smacked senseless as a _reward._

Ren says nothing to the comment, and Hux finds that he is grateful for that restraint.

But, as always, it ends.

“Your mentality is compromised,” Ren says to him, and Hux _hates_ that voice, exposed and human without the vocoder of his mask. “You were saying things, in your sleep… it was rather aggravating. To think that someone held in such esteem can hardly keep his thoughts from being broadcast to the galaxy--”

“Mind your own force-damned business, Ren. And stay out of my _head.”_ Hux hisses, with vitriol, his grip tightening on the blankets as he pulls them closer, tucked over his frail figure, a pitiful last defense.

The Knight doesn’t listen, of course; he moves, swiftly, boots hitting the floor with a precision that makes it impossible to imagine him as the same man who had been bleeding out only two weeks earlier. Hux struggles to move back, his body slamming against the headboard before unceremoniously tumbling out of the bed, on his side and facing the wall as strong hands take hold of his arms, haul him up from the ground and shove him back onto the flimsy mattress. Kylo’s face is mere inches from his, his breath a stench permeating the air as it hits his pallid cheeks.

“You’re in no place to be giving orders, General,” he says, and before Hux can protest, there are a pair of arms slid tight around his midsection, pulling him into the embrace of a firm body, hot, heavy and immovable against him. Hux struggles, his shoulders trembling and one hand weakly shoving at Kylo’s chest to force him away, only for an arm to slide under his knees and pick him up completely.

Bare feet kick against empty space in protest, but Ren seems to have no care for that. It is only when Hux’s exhaustion has gotten the best of him, when he goes limp in Ren’s arms, that he is set down.

He curls in on himself, pliant in his co-commander’s stiff arms, allowing his back to be tucked against a firm chest that feels far more impressive than it appears normally. Without the padding of his uniform, the shield of his greatcoat, Hux finds himself feeling small and _childlike_ in this position. He tilts his head, cranes his neck up to glance over Kylo’s boyish face. And _how, what, why is he so special? Why is it_ him, _gifted everything he could’ve possibly desired, allowed power purely because of nepotism? Why is it_ him, _to be here, holding me like some jilted lover he’s just had a spat with?_

“I don’t need your _pity,_ Ren,” Hux says, at long last, but the protest drains from him as blankets are tucked back around his body. A pair of lips find his cheek, kiss the purple-black marks across his bones with a gentleness that Hux has never been privy to before. It stuns him, enough that he half jumps, urged to pull away though he finds himself wanting to _stay_ so badly.

“This is what you _want,”_ Kylo says, more insistent. “Don’t try and hurt the people who want to _help.”_

But that’s all Hux has ever done, isn’t it? All he’s ever done is make other people _hurt,_ made them _suffer._ Because he hated the galaxy and he hated himself, and so he sealed himself off, pretended he was made of ice. He broke his own mind, his own heart, for the mere belief that they were neither wanted nor needed, something unnecessary in his desperate quest for _strength,_ to be _real._

Unless it was a punch, a slap, a knife sunk in his wrist, a whip flaying his skin, it wasn’t _useful._ His recognition was the sharp resonance of pain searing his bones, of blood seeping from his flesh as he tried to understand what he _was._

“Sometimes I thought you were a droid,” Kylo confesses against his ear, and Hux breathes a broken chuckle.

“Perhaps I am,” he says, finally. “I don’t really know _what_ I am.”

 

* * *

 

 

In the hours that follow, when lights are once more filtering in through ceiling vents, dim enough that the room is still set in darkness yet light enough for Hux to _look_ at Ren, he finds himself on his back. His hands are gripping tight to the Knight’s body, one threading into his raven hair, the other sinking nails into the juncture of his shoulder, uncertain of what he’s even doing there. His lips part easily, allowing Ren to lick into his mouth, nip at his swollen lip and caress the edge of his bruised jaw, their eyes meeting every few seconds, carrying a conversation without words.

Hux’s leg hooks around the back of Ren’s knee, and he tilts his chin, offering. The haughtiness so often seen in his visage is gone, at least for now, and he lies there with a neutral expression, eyes glinting in a desire previously forgotten.

He remembers, now, nights in the Academy, nights where he would lie in his bunk with hands pressed to the array of cuts on his thigh, fingers tracing a curve up to the inside of his legs, languidly teasing over the head of his cock. He remembers, when the other cadets were asleep, how he’d slick his hand with spit and press slim digits inside himself, curl them into that spot nestled inside his body, so well hidden that nobody would’ve ever told him about it. He remembers thinking, _what would it be like, to have someone touch me?_ and considering, _how angry would Brendol be, to know of these proclivities? Would the others call me a desperate whore, cast me further aside like the heathen I truly am?_

He’d covered those memories, let them subside into the array of bruised knuckles and broken wrists, a fist against his nose, his head snapping to the side as he bled. He’d removed them, in lieu of considering his own abrasive nature, how he’d gladly kill those who had once slighted him, how he’d wanted to tear them apart, watch them burn and drown in their own deceit.

Now, though, there is nothing left for him to hide from.

Starkiller is gone. Brendol is gone. Everything is meaningless.

Hux stretches out, flat on his back, Ren beside him as he stares at the ceiling, deep in thought. He has no desire to move from this position, no desire to get up ever again, longing for this moment that he had never dared to imagine, the _closeness_ he was certain he would never have. Hux’s skin still tingles from Ren’s touch, unused to the gentleness of those calloused fingers or that soft mouth, questioning but not demanding as it kissed his face.

Hux isn’t sure he understands, but he thinks that he wants to, _might_ want to, in the future.

He tucks his head underneath Kylo’s chin, the death wish of thirty-five years forgotten for this moment of security.

This is fleeting, but this is also eternity.

* * *

_Checking my heart again; it_ _'s still beating._  
_Grayer than winter days, th_ _e clouds in my head._

 _All my life, been changing lanes_  
_I'm so bored of taking my chances, of making mistakes._

_fin._

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> rough year, rough times.
> 
> please leave a kudos or comment if it meant anything at all as a story.  
> you can find me on tumblr @klismapositive if you want to request a fic or talk about star wars with me.


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